by Alan Keslian
When he arrived Darren looked around the room at the dozen or more patients but did not immediately recognise me. Cautiously, discovering how to stand and move with the aid of the crutch, I made my way towards him. Twice he surveyed the room without spotting me, at last identifying me as I hobbled closer. Tactlessly he said, ‘God, you look terrible.’
A taxi took us back to the hotel. My face was horrific. The flesh around my right eye was badly marked, blood had flooded the white of the cornea, my lower lip was swollen, and a dark grey bruise covered most of the left side of my face. A thin white dressing of some kind had been stuck over a cut under my chin. I would have to keep myself out of sight of the hotel guests as far as possible.
Anxiety was as much a problem as my physical condition. What if the two men returned? They had not been to the garden centre since that night when they tried to force their way in after it had closed. They might have come upon me in the avenue by coincidence, or they might have found out that I ran the hotel and been looking for me. They might be outside in the street at that moment watching and waiting. Suppose that, flushed with success after tackling me on my way to the bank, they were to come into the hotel demanding money?
When the second floor room had been vandalised, awful though the incident had seemed at the time, nobody was physically injured, and Tom had turned up after a few hours to sort out the mess. Now only Darren was around to help. What if the thugs attacked him?
Needing to rest I hobbled down to the basement where I made myself a hot drink and lay down, cautiously trying to avoid the most sensitive of my sore spots. My thoughts returned again and again to Tom. Had he been there, how much less desperate things would seem. Putting the receiver down on him like that when he rang from Portsmouth had been so final; it had been unfair after we had been together for so long. By nature he was completely different to the thugs who had attacked me. He might once have stolen cars, but he would never have deliberately hurt anyone. On the few occasions when he had been verbally aggressive, he had apologised freely afterwards. How hard the confinement of prison must have been for him, accustomed to moving from site to site for his work. Whatever he might have done in the past, what was the sense in our being apart now? Judging him so harshly had rebounded on me. The result was that I had made my own life a misery.
Yet to call him up because I was in a mess and needed his help would be humiliating. Later, after I had recovered, we would be able to talk on equal terms. Would he want to talk to me? He might have come to think of himself as the injured party in our relationship. He had had nothing to do with my parents’ death; he had never done me any harm. All I had against him was that he should have told me about his conviction, that was all. He had served a prison sentence for what he had done; what gave me the right to punish him a second time?
If we were to get together again, surely being honest with each other was the way, not for me to start out by concealing my vulnerability and weakness from him. The sooner he knew what had happened to me, the better my chance of getting him back. At last I did what I should have done that evening when Andrew had revealed their secret in the restaurant: I called Tom on his mobile ’phone. When the ringing tone stopped I heard his voice for the first time in months.
‘Hello Tom, it’s me.’
‘How are you doing?’
‘Something terrible’s happened.’
‘I heard. You’ve been mugged. Darren’s just been on the ’phone. Is there someone there to look after you? I’m sorry, Mark, this is all my fault.’
‘Of course it’s not your fault. Darren rang you?’
‘There wasn’t any harm in it, Mark. He’s rung me a couple of times to keep me in touch with things, that’s all. He wasn’t being disloyal to you or nothing. Thank god you’ve rung anyway. Shall I catch the train? Only take me a few hours to get back to London.’
‘No, you don’t have to do that, your work down there… ’
‘Doesn’t matter. I’ll tell them it’s an emergency. If you’d like me to come.’
‘Yes, I really would like you to come, but you don’t have to rush, don’t cause yourself problems. I look ghastly. Horrific.’
‘You shouldn’t talk about yourself like that. I’ll go down to the station and call you from there. Won’t be long mate.’
Bringing him back was as easy as that. An hour later I struggled upstairs and sat in the office reading the newspaper, waiting for him to arrive. A dozen times I heard the front door open and looked up full of hope, only to be disappointed by the sound of one of the guests making his way upstairs. At last there was a loud knock and his voice called down the hall: ‘Darren, Mark, anyone about?’
Darren answered from the kitchen: ‘He’s in the office.’
Tom came and stood in the doorway. ‘What are you doing in here?’
‘Waiting.’
‘Ooorph, look at you. You should be in bed.’
‘How have you been?’
‘Don’t worry about me.’ He helped me to my feet. ‘Can you walk all right?’
‘Hobble. I can hobble.’ We each put an arm around the other, and moved in a four-legged shuffle to the top of the basement stairs.
‘All right, you can hang on to me but stay behind me, we don’t want you falling down stairs.’
Chapter 14
One effect of the assault was that my work on the Dunblane Spa project came to an end. Some figure work already in hand could be finished on the computer at Goodmans Hotel and relayed via the internet to Vincent’s office. My multicoloured wounds were a good excuse to drop out of the face to face meetings arranged for the coming weeks with the US client. Vincent, typically, was kind and considerate. He said he hoped we might work together on another project in the future, that anyway we would be seeing each other socially before long, and that if I needed help he could send one of his people down to the hotel for an hour or two, though with Darren, Tom and the garden centre staff nearby there was no need for me to take up the offer.
The ugliness of my injuries was not the sole reason for quitting the project. With the end of the tax year looming there was plenty of paperwork for me to do at the hotel, and I wanted time with Tom to re-establish the old feeling of closeness we had known before our break-up. I skulked around in the background keeping out of sight of the guests as far as possible, and at the garden centre everyone followed the manager’s lead in making a fuss of me. He felt responsible for the mugging, and sent over three huge flower arrangements for the hotel with a card signed by all the staff. A well intentioned lady from the local Victim Support Group rang to offer sympathy and asked if she could do anything, but of Jamie and the two thugs who had attacked me we heard nothing more.
Tom rang his employer in Portsmouth with a story about having to stay at home because his mother was seriously ill. Within a few days he was working for local householders again. The old reassuring routines of our lives reasserted themselves, although having come so close to permanent break-up we were very careful to be considerate towards one other. My sense of having been wronged by him had completely gone. If he had hurt me by keeping his past a secret, my putting the ’phone down on him when he rang from Portsmouth with those pompous dismissive words ‘I have nothing at all to say to you’ must have hurt him; and on my part the hurt had been intentional.
He showed no sign of resentment, and was as helpful as ever with fixing things in the hotel. When Darren mentioned a patch of damp in the little bathroom under the roof, he went up to investigate and concluded that rain-water was seeping in. The pain in my leg had more or less gone by then and we took a step ladder and some tools up so that he could look for the leak from inside the loft. He hauled himself up through the hatch and I handed up a torch, trying to protect my eyes from the falling smuts. A trap door led out onto the flat roof above the bathroom and when he opened it daylight came streaming into the roof space. ‘Come and have a look,’ he called down.
Always nervous of ladders, I climbed another step up and
peered into the loft. A layer of black dust coated the fibre-glass insulation between the joists. ‘Shouldn’t you be wearing a face mask?’
‘Come on,’ he said, ignoring my question, forcefully grasping my left arm and pulling me upwards, giving me no choice but to scramble after him, using my free hand to grab joists and rafters to steady myself. ‘What about my leg?’
‘You’ll be all right.’ He gripped my hand firmly to help steady me and guided me towards the hatch. ‘Come and look over here, you can see for miles. Stand on the joists, not the insulation, otherwise you’ll make a hole in the ceiling.’
‘I have been inside a loft before. All this dust is awful.’ The trap door was set in the slope of the roof, about a yard above the flat metal-covered area above the bathroom. He stepped out backwards, holding onto the sides of the hatchway as he lowered himself down over the slope. Balancing with difficulty on the joists I began to follow, but when I backed out of the opening my foot did not reach down far enough for me to stand on the flat surface below, and fear of falling made me freeze. He grabbed my legs. ‘Come on, I’ve got you, let yourself slide down, you won’t fall.’
Somehow or other I slithered down. He left me kneeling terrified by the hatch and went to the edge of the roof, where he stood like a mountaineer looking out from a rocky crag. Recovering my nerve with a few deep breaths, I stood up and took cautious steps towards him, and looked down into the Mews and the row of long thin gardens behind the terraced houses. We were no more than four or five feet higher up than if we had been in Darren’s room, but that extra height was enough for us to see over the top of the nearby roofs. Row upon row of grey slate showed the extent of the Victorian suburb, and in the distance we could see the dome of the Royal Albert Hall and the Imperial College Tower.
This panorama, not visible from any of the windows of the rooms below, was completely new to me. The view was not one of London’s finest, the City’s office towers being hidden by a block of flats. Expanses of grey slate roof predominated in other directions, but the escapade of climbing out there was a good example of how much fun life could be when Tom was around. Without him I would probably never have gone up there to look.
Had anyone at street level seen us, standing with our arms around one another, they would have thought us oddly affectionate for two workmen up on a roof. A car turned under the arch at the end of the mews; it stopped at a doorway and a couple emerged to unload shopping from the back, absorbed in what they were doing, unaware of us watching from above.
He turned to examine the roof. ‘You can see where the water’s been coming in. Over here, look.’ He pointed to where the edge of a metal sheet covering the flat roof on which we stood had lifted to make a small gap.
‘Doesn’t look much. Are you sure that’s it?’
‘Pretty sure. Can’t see anything else that might be causing the leak. I’ll flatten it, stick it down, and we’ll see if that sorts it.’
We had yet to talk about his car thefts, but we both knew that the subject was too important to ignore. In the early days of our relationship, in the pub, over meals, lying together after sex, we had told each other all the significant events of our lives. Now whenever we passed a Mercedes, a Jaguar or another expensive car in the street we were reminded that part of his life remained secret from me. We would glance sideways at one another, knowing that we could not put off discussing the subject for much longer. However difficult talking might be for him, until we did my not knowing would remain a barrier between us.
Understanding one another completely, absorbing everything we possibly could about each other, was essential. More than once, after listening to part of my life story, he had said, ‘I know how that must have made you feel. Sometimes it’s as though what’s happened to you has happened to me.’ I felt the same about his experiences; sharing our pasts was as important as the physical pleasure of making love. How could we be truly close, think of ourselves as a couple, or expect to know what the other would want even when we were physically apart, until the gap was closed?
The subject raised itself when the hotel guest Andrew had told me about, the one who had visited his son in the same prison as Tom, reserved a room again. In a quiet voice I mentioned the booking to him. He was silent for perhaps half a minute. ‘Probably turn out he won’t even recognise me. Just coincidence that he saw me at all in the visiting room, we never spoke.’
‘If you’d rather, I could cancel, say we’ve had a flood or something and suggest he tries Housmans Hotel. If you’re unhappy about him coming.’
‘No, there’s no reason to do that. Wasn’t exactly my finest hour, you can understand me not wanting to be reminded of it.’
‘You don’t want to tell me about it?’
‘It might have been worse than you think. You’ve probably got enough of an idea of what that kind of life is about from what you read in the papers. ’
‘It’s part of you. But if talking about it is too difficult… ’
‘All right.’ We took beers into the empty breakfast room and sat opposite each other in the bright light of the bay window. We were committed now, but for perhaps a minute he sighed and shuffled in his chair.
‘We’re not talking about a one-off mistake here. There’s things I’ve done that even Andrew doesn’t know about.’
‘Trust me.’
‘The start of it all was way back, when I was still at school. I haven’t spent all my life thieving, and what there was is all behind me. It was another life.’
‘You got into trouble when you were a kid?’
‘We got away with it. Maybe it would have been better if we hadn’t – might have put us off.’ He and a school friend had begun stealing when he was fourteen. They used to go out trying the door handles of parked cars and taking things from inside any that had been left unlocked. They took cigarettes, sweets, and small change which they spent in amusement arcades. One day they saw a leather jacket on the back seat of a car and broke a side window to get it; it was too big for either of them and they sold it for a few pounds to a friend’s brother. They became more determined, made forays into new areas, and by smashing car windows greatly increased their haul. The first time a car alarm went off they ran off in opposite directions, but after triggering two or three they realised that nobody took much notice and that the best way to avoid attracting attention was to cross the street and walk calmly away.
Later they began joy riding, forcing or breaking windows to get into older cars that were less well secured, driving them for a few miles, and ripping out the car stereo systems. They went out at night, wore dark clothing and gloves to make themselves less noticeable and varied the times and the places they targeted. They were twice spotted by someone who gave chase, but they ran fast enough not to be caught.
‘Didn’t your parents ask what you were doing?’
‘They thought I was out with my mates. In a way I suppose I was. Why should they worry? I wasn’t pestering them.’
‘They must have wondered where your money was coming from.’
‘A couple of times I said I was doing jobs for a friend’s uncle, someone they didn’t know, clearing out the garage or helping in the garden.’
‘They should have taken more of an interest in what you were getting up to.’
‘I ain’t blaming them for what happened. They brought me up to know the difference between right and wrong. What I did was down to me. They don’t even know I was sent down. My Mum and Dad never had any trouble with the law, nor has my brother. They’d be ashamed if they ever found out.’
‘You kept everything to yourself, even from your brother?’
‘He may have suspected something, but he’s the last one to tell about anything like that. You’d never hear the end of it. He might look like a hard case, but he’s completely straight. In some ways you’ve got lot in common with him.’
‘Thanks a lot.’ The comparison was, I guessed, meant to be teasing. It lightened the mood, and I was glad he felt comf
ortable enough for a little humour. What I wanted was an understanding of that part of his life, not some sort of confession. ‘I meant to tell you about him coming up to me outside the newsagent’s a week or so ago asking what you were doing in Portsmouth. I just told him that we’d split up, nothing else.’
‘Good, thanks for keeping it quiet. Anyway to account to my family for my time inside I made up a story about finding some work up north. Because Andrew helped me by letting me have the flat above the garden centre and giving me work when I got out I didn’t have to go crawling back to them for help.’
‘So, you were stealing from cars and joy riding when you were a kid.’
‘We weren’t that bad, not compared to some kids who smash up cars and set fire to them. Me and my mate never did serious damage. Joy riding was a fantastic thrill. When the most you’d ever done is drive a few hundred yards round the back of some flats in the family motor, jump-starting one that you’d broken into and whizzing it round the streets was terrific. We never went far in them, the owners would’ve got their car back in a day or two. All they had to do was replace the glass and fix the wires back in the ignition. We were kids, we were just messing about.’
He and his friend fell out a couple of times over money, but want of cash and hunger for excitement brought them back together again. When they left school Tom found a job as a trainee electrician and his adolescent spate of law breaking came to an end. He took driving lessons, saved up enough to buy his own car and lost touch with the boy he used to go stealing with. Gay pubs, clubs, and sex provided him with thrills of a different kind.
He had shown me photographs taken after he first started work, including images of him with his first boyfriend, a lad as thin as Darren who worked in a department store. Tom told his family he was gay and took the boy home several times, but after four or five months they split up. His parents and brother tried put pressure on him, saying that he was not really gay and would forget about men if he made a proper effort with a steady girlfriend. Dejected and mistrusting his own feelings, he followed their advice and found a girl whose company he enjoyed, but in bed he could perform only by imagining he was with a man. In a supermarket where he had gone alone one day an attractive man looked at him a few times as they passed in the aisles. He responded, they spoke and went back to the man’s flat. Holding a male body in his arms again made it obvious to him that with the girl he was merely pretending. He told her he had found someone else and escaped his family’s influence by moving out to a flat of his own.